Post by DA Malatesta on Oct 31, 2005 13:28:00 GMT -5
New Orleans: The City Disaster Built
The proof is in the pudding, not outside of it. When the levees in New Orleans burst, covering the city in water, toxic sludge and debris, the country and the world was shocked, angered and saddened. There were some individuals who, often wedded to the Democratic Party cause, immediately sought to point the finger at Bush for his failure to marshal an appropriate federal response. In a similar manner, the federal government is placing the reasons for the tragic results of this hurricane at the feet of state and local officials. Others were convinced that the federal and local government did all that it could, as tragic as all the suffering might be. Then there were still others who suggested that it was God’s or Allah’s will who, realizing the avarice and vice of the world’s sins, cast his wrath upon New Orleans.
Without going into the inadequacies of each of these interpretations, it can be broadly concluded that all of them are woefully lacking in depth and understanding. Every example presented is a struggle on the part of the authorities and public opinion to personalize the dire consequences of hurricane Katrina.
The whole manner in which people tend to view this crisis is through binaries of good and evil. In the dream world of the democrat, there is the common sentiment that Katrina could have been averted if there were good apples like democrats to replace the rotting conservative apples like Bush. The leftist, in a similar way, often believes that if progressive engineers designed the city of New Orleans the problems we are witnessing would have been circumvented. The religious fanatic attributes strange goings-on like Katrina to a supernatural deity who is sending signs to the world. Such signs are, according to these people, warnings to humans. The essence of such warnings is: stop living in “evil” and ungodly ways. In all of these examples the problems of the reality before us are cast as problems inherent within the general make up of human beings – not in the way human beings relate to themselves, others and the broader world. The disaster of Katrina is then placed outside of our immediate grasp.
But all of this has to be placed in its appropriate context. The response to the hurricane which devastated portions of the southeast can be likened to the response of the aeroplane crash into the Twin Towers on September 11th. Like that event, today’s Hurricane Katrina will be lost in tomorrow’s flurry of news. Before the tears of public opinion and politicians have dried up, it will be time to shed tears for next week’s harbinger of doom. The facts and images we encounter on a daily basis are little more than that: facts and images. Without any broader understanding and analysis, the consumer of news is always one step behind the news agencies (which reflect the reality governing our lives). The media (and society at large) presents social reality as being locked in a God-given, immutable and ethereal present, without past or future. There is no irony in the fact that we live in the information age where bits of facts and statistics are seen as merely tiny fragments unconnected to a larger historical whole. To the consumer of news all that matters is the latest stream of news (which is, of course, updated by the second). The rest is simply history – bereft of any general meaning, purpose, direction or consequence.
To the thinking person, on the other hand, the devastation and misery wrought by Katrina should come as no real surprise. The world we live in is a capitalist one where devastating social problems didn’t suddenly appear on the Gulf Coast in the year 2005. Following September 11th, we were told, by assorted hucksters and pundits, the world will never be the same again. But the exact opposite is actually true: we are plagued by the norm. Wars, wage labor, top-heavy bureaucracies, toxic cities, anomie, devastation and destruction are the order of the day. The extent to which we are slaves to the same can be witnessed by the fact that before many of the surviving residents of New Orleans were whisked out of the area, construction contractors like Halliburton were on the scene surveying the extent of the carnage. The intention of course is to reap mounds of profit which accompanies the rebuilding of ruined cities.
Naturally such a rebuilding project will employ a sizable army of workers who, with their productive activity, will contribute to helping stimulate a failing world economy. But if we examine this process closely we can see that the employing of workers to “fix” the exhausted city means only more disaster. The disaster we speak of is cumulative but ultimately results in mass death. What we are referring to here is on the job injuries and death due to unsafe, unsanitary and overall inhuman working conditions. In the US “more auto workers were killed and injured each year on the job than soldiers were killed and injured during any year of the Vietnam War.”[1] In the end, there is next to no doubt that the reconstruction of the city itself will barrel forth with much regard for cost cutting and maximum profitability, and little regard for workers safety and the natural environment.
As it stands now, however, the city of New Orleans has yet to be freed of all its “unruly” citizens. Amidst the horrified shrieks of politicians, police, military and public opinion, specific residents have taken it upon themselves to take care of their own needs. There are reports of looting and redistribution of commodities among certain of those trapped in the city without food or water. Yet those who are trapped in the city are told to hold back and wait for the authorities to provide relief for them. The parallels we are witnessing in the wake of this calamity are strikingly similar to what is occurring in Iraq at this very moment. Indeed, over half of the 7000 National Guardsmen returning from their stint in Iraq have embarked on Louisiana with strict orders to “shoot-to-kill.” The pictures of troops assisting in distributing food and water to beleaguered victims of the storm stand alongside images of troops harassing and threatening looters trying to score a shirt for their back from the department store. Here it is hard to resist making an analogy with certain of those troops in Iraq giving candy to Iraqi children, while the next day blowing other Iraqis to smithereens.
The conclusion that can be drawn from this is: in both New Orleans and Iraq the primary concern is with trying to cement the pieces back together in order to allow commerce and investment to flourish. All of the chatter about business and government concern over human life are just that: mere chatter. The system that created and allowed the major consequences of this tragedy to thrive cannot simultaneously act in any sincere regard for its victims.
The Disastrous Consequences of Capitalist Urban Planning
It is the working class who lose everything in disaster, but unfortunately not their chains.
-Amadeo Bordiga
Engineers were aware that the city of New Orleans was unable to survive a storm higher than a Category 3, yet developers kept developing, investors kept investing and insurers kept insuring. Unsurprisingly, when the levees were breached 80 percent of the city was submerged underwater. New Orleans is a prime example of capitalist development patterns at their ghastly worst. Much of the city was subject to neglected infrastructure, which made it more susceptible to natural disasters. Furthermore, lax building codes made it easy for developers to develop with no regard for the precarious environment the region was built upon.
A key factor in this debacle is the history of capitalist exploitation of the land. In the 20th century assorted forms of high impact commercial and industrial development descended on southeastern Louisiana like a plague of locusts. Brian Azcona and Jason Neville tell us “economic activities required erosion-causing modifications to the landscape such as canals, levees and drainage. Historically, these wetlands provided invaluable flood protection by acting as a sponge to soak-up the menace of storm surge. In fact, before these new ‘protections’ were built, healthy periodic floods depositing nutrient rich sediments were actually increasing out to coastal areas. Where land once stood is now open water, providing fuel to the flurry of hurricanes…development reduced the absorbent capacity of the region, while simultaneously increasing runoff and toxicity. In other words, economic growth translated into more water, more danger and a greater and increasingly imminent catastrophe.” [2]
The story of development in the Gulf Coast region follows a pattern of out-and-out neglect for the land and those who live on it. The Army Corp of Engineers, a government agency, actively started building the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) in the late 1950s. The MR-GO “is a 70 mile ship channel that connects the Port of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico in a route as straight as a ruler.”[3] First and foremost, the idea was to build a port that would provide revenue for the area. The building of this port, however, shows, with clarity, how the interests of business are placed above any real concern for the massive loss of life that could likely occur in the event of a major calamity. In certain estimations, this canal was responsible for trapping Katrina’s winds. These winds then breached the levee, causing massive damage and creating toxically unsafe conditions. The tireless campaigning, on the part of people and various grassroots organizations, could not stem the tide of business interests. On the part of the government, nothing was done to even mildly quell the tide of public disgust directed towards this monstrous canal. And we are now living with the end result.
The poorest area of the city, the Lower Ninth Ward, was flooded beyond belief due to the breach of the levee. But the impact of this storm also affected well-to-do beach houses inhabited by the wealthy. The whole region was riddled with ruin and devastation. However, the poor and working class victims are the ones whose lives will be the most difficult to put back in order. From the start, those unable to trudge out of the region before the storm hit were largely those who had no means of transportation. Family and friends who had a way out loaded their vehicles and whizzed off to safer ground. The poor, without transportation or the monetary means to buy an Amtrak or Greyhound ticket, were forced to weather the storm. There have been a few photographs released of hundreds of school buses – some less than a mile from the Superdome – submerged underwater. Those school buses could have saved numerous citizens. But for whatever reason it was more “practical” for the city to allow them to sit idle in a parking lot.
Yet let there be no mistake about it. Modern urbanization itself brings with it cities that are built primarily for the production and, most of all, consumption of commodities. The monumental architecture of today’s city demonstrates its inhuman, economically centered and seemingly supernatural force. What’s more, this gigantism, which is an inherent part of the modern city, carries forth a whole language of economics where “cost cutting,” “productive efficiency” and various forms of computer lingo overshadow a richly poetic and coherent human use of language. Overwhelmingly, the cities of the last century have undergone significant alterations. Even prior to the end of the Second World War European and North American cities had a character that was undoubtedly commercial, but still retained vestigial elements of the rural culture from which a large number of the inhabitants of many major cities emerged. These rural elements commingled with a worldly cosmopolitan culture. By some accounts New Orleans had this dimension to it with its Mardi Gras festival – unfortunately in recent years it has tended to focus less and less on the festival aspect and more and more on the commercial and exchange aspect.
The nonorthodox Marxist Karl Polanyi once carefully examined how the market mechanism has profoundly penetrated and transformed society. According to Polanyi, whose major work, The Great Transformation, was published in 1944, ever since the end of the 19th century we live in a world where the market rules supreme. Virtually every aspect of our existence is consumed by the imperatives of buying and selling. It is no earth shattering revelation that production for the sake of profit brings with it land, soil and air that is unfit for habitation by humans or other animals. The glitter, glitz and excess of the city carries along with it slums and shantytowns like sections of New Orleans where those who labor for the idle rich reside. The overall trend is towards the urbanization of poverty where farmers or peasants retreat from their rural dwelling and enter the urban zone. Often times the rural dweller abandons his land because he can no longer afford the burdens of unemployment and increasing property taxes. So it comes as no real surprise then that the distinctions between urban and rural are starting to become increasingly blurred. Cities and suburbs are demolishing the countryside while city dwellers are increasingly isolated from one another in shared feelings of alienation and anomie. Concentration and poverty tend to breed isolation as well as hostility and anger. In a city such as New Orleans it is obvious that crime has a direct correlation with circumstances like poverty and overt racism. Crime is social category but the reality of it exists. And those individuals who engage in it are trying to survive in a world dominated by vast disparities in wealth, notably between the rich and the poor.
For all of its cultural treasures like the French Quarter (which apparently withstood the winds of the storm) and its Mardi Gras celebration, New Orleans (like all modern cities) was built upon the backs of the poor and working class. There is no way to tell what will become of this historical city once the debris and ruin is cleared away, but what we can say with certainty is that Katrina is merely the tip of the iceberg. The world economy before the storm hit was steadily worsening while the general sentiment among the poor and the working class the world over is one of defeat and resignation.
The Historical Meaning of Hurricane Katrina
The modern day obsession with “living in the moment” has dire consequences. George Orwell once pointed out, in his legendary book 1984, what it means when humans are incapable of articulating themselves and their history. The main protagonist, Winston, sits down to write but is incapable of doing so. The words cease to have any meaning while Winston is locked into an ahistorical present. Winston’s world is tightly controlled by a totalitarian system which is perceived as abstract, untouchable and faceless.
We face a troubling social predicament that has striking parallels to Orwell’s dystopia. Isolated behind the wheel of their automobile and imprisoned in front of their television set, women and men of the 21st century suffer from a crisis in understanding and relating to themselves, one another and the world. No longer able to understand his past history, the modern man trudges along – lost in a depressing and mind-numbing world. Katrina is then seen as an “event” on par with any other “event.”
But in this blinding haze of fragmentation there are moments, however brief, when human solidarity asserts itself. In the aftermath of Katrina there has been an enormous show of mutual aid by residents of the storm-strewn southeast. In many instances, concerned inhabitants have scoured residential areas by boat in an effort to help neighbors evacuate their homes. The looting of stores and the redistribution of commodities also shows how once sacred objects can become, to coin a term, desacredized and used for human need, not profit.
When all is said and done, however, the magnitude of this hurricane will be calculated and cataloged by the learned authorities. They will place the results of their findings, like specimens, on the proper shelf and wait for another disaster to hit. Notes will be compared between hurricane Katrina specialists and specialists of the latest natural catastrophe. Yet they will be unable to act in any substantively different manner towards the latest crisis. Like déjà vu, the miscellaneous bureaucracies will pin the blame on one another, public opinion will be at least partially satisfied with the results and developers will start developing once again.
Crucially, this devouring pattern of normalcy must be broken. The human condition has become increasingly perilous. We are living in a time which threatens not only to erode the last threads of human endeavor and history, but we are also threatened with the destruction of the natural world. There is something truly cynical about an age which refuses to see a way out of its stingy grime of disaster and subdued dread. The loss of any real sense that we can fight back comes part and parcel with the notion that “nobody ever fights back (or has fought back historically), so why should I?” Beyond the electronic bits of information we are encouraged to consume lies a world that must be remade. The historical record is bursting with examples of ordinary humans (not stars, celebrities or politicians) transcending the bounds of a market society. Whether it be the Parisian Communards of 1871 mutinying against the army or Argentineans in late 2001 forming neighborhood assemblies as a response to the crash of the Peso, these instances are springboards that provide a living hope for a potential world of colorful promise. Will we live up to such a promise? No one can say with any degree of certainty but the static void that humans have allowed themselves to be drowned in offers nothing but more disasters like Katrina.
-September 9, 2005
ENDNOTES
1. Detroit: I do mind dying, Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin (New York, 1975), quoted in Murdering the Dead: Amadeo Bordiga on Capitalism and Other Disasters (London, 2001).
2. “Unnatural Disaster: The Crisis in Public Planning,” Jason Neville and Brian Azcona, September 2, 2005, neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/4096.php.
3. Ibid.
The author of this article also publishes Communicating Vessels, a periodical started in 2001. Communicating Vessels combines theory and history with surrealism as well as poetry.
Communicating Vessels can be ordered directly for $3 ppd from:
Communicating Vessels / 3527 NE 15th Avenue #127 / Portland, OR 97212 / US
The proof is in the pudding, not outside of it. When the levees in New Orleans burst, covering the city in water, toxic sludge and debris, the country and the world was shocked, angered and saddened. There were some individuals who, often wedded to the Democratic Party cause, immediately sought to point the finger at Bush for his failure to marshal an appropriate federal response. In a similar manner, the federal government is placing the reasons for the tragic results of this hurricane at the feet of state and local officials. Others were convinced that the federal and local government did all that it could, as tragic as all the suffering might be. Then there were still others who suggested that it was God’s or Allah’s will who, realizing the avarice and vice of the world’s sins, cast his wrath upon New Orleans.
Without going into the inadequacies of each of these interpretations, it can be broadly concluded that all of them are woefully lacking in depth and understanding. Every example presented is a struggle on the part of the authorities and public opinion to personalize the dire consequences of hurricane Katrina.
The whole manner in which people tend to view this crisis is through binaries of good and evil. In the dream world of the democrat, there is the common sentiment that Katrina could have been averted if there were good apples like democrats to replace the rotting conservative apples like Bush. The leftist, in a similar way, often believes that if progressive engineers designed the city of New Orleans the problems we are witnessing would have been circumvented. The religious fanatic attributes strange goings-on like Katrina to a supernatural deity who is sending signs to the world. Such signs are, according to these people, warnings to humans. The essence of such warnings is: stop living in “evil” and ungodly ways. In all of these examples the problems of the reality before us are cast as problems inherent within the general make up of human beings – not in the way human beings relate to themselves, others and the broader world. The disaster of Katrina is then placed outside of our immediate grasp.
But all of this has to be placed in its appropriate context. The response to the hurricane which devastated portions of the southeast can be likened to the response of the aeroplane crash into the Twin Towers on September 11th. Like that event, today’s Hurricane Katrina will be lost in tomorrow’s flurry of news. Before the tears of public opinion and politicians have dried up, it will be time to shed tears for next week’s harbinger of doom. The facts and images we encounter on a daily basis are little more than that: facts and images. Without any broader understanding and analysis, the consumer of news is always one step behind the news agencies (which reflect the reality governing our lives). The media (and society at large) presents social reality as being locked in a God-given, immutable and ethereal present, without past or future. There is no irony in the fact that we live in the information age where bits of facts and statistics are seen as merely tiny fragments unconnected to a larger historical whole. To the consumer of news all that matters is the latest stream of news (which is, of course, updated by the second). The rest is simply history – bereft of any general meaning, purpose, direction or consequence.
To the thinking person, on the other hand, the devastation and misery wrought by Katrina should come as no real surprise. The world we live in is a capitalist one where devastating social problems didn’t suddenly appear on the Gulf Coast in the year 2005. Following September 11th, we were told, by assorted hucksters and pundits, the world will never be the same again. But the exact opposite is actually true: we are plagued by the norm. Wars, wage labor, top-heavy bureaucracies, toxic cities, anomie, devastation and destruction are the order of the day. The extent to which we are slaves to the same can be witnessed by the fact that before many of the surviving residents of New Orleans were whisked out of the area, construction contractors like Halliburton were on the scene surveying the extent of the carnage. The intention of course is to reap mounds of profit which accompanies the rebuilding of ruined cities.
Naturally such a rebuilding project will employ a sizable army of workers who, with their productive activity, will contribute to helping stimulate a failing world economy. But if we examine this process closely we can see that the employing of workers to “fix” the exhausted city means only more disaster. The disaster we speak of is cumulative but ultimately results in mass death. What we are referring to here is on the job injuries and death due to unsafe, unsanitary and overall inhuman working conditions. In the US “more auto workers were killed and injured each year on the job than soldiers were killed and injured during any year of the Vietnam War.”[1] In the end, there is next to no doubt that the reconstruction of the city itself will barrel forth with much regard for cost cutting and maximum profitability, and little regard for workers safety and the natural environment.
As it stands now, however, the city of New Orleans has yet to be freed of all its “unruly” citizens. Amidst the horrified shrieks of politicians, police, military and public opinion, specific residents have taken it upon themselves to take care of their own needs. There are reports of looting and redistribution of commodities among certain of those trapped in the city without food or water. Yet those who are trapped in the city are told to hold back and wait for the authorities to provide relief for them. The parallels we are witnessing in the wake of this calamity are strikingly similar to what is occurring in Iraq at this very moment. Indeed, over half of the 7000 National Guardsmen returning from their stint in Iraq have embarked on Louisiana with strict orders to “shoot-to-kill.” The pictures of troops assisting in distributing food and water to beleaguered victims of the storm stand alongside images of troops harassing and threatening looters trying to score a shirt for their back from the department store. Here it is hard to resist making an analogy with certain of those troops in Iraq giving candy to Iraqi children, while the next day blowing other Iraqis to smithereens.
The conclusion that can be drawn from this is: in both New Orleans and Iraq the primary concern is with trying to cement the pieces back together in order to allow commerce and investment to flourish. All of the chatter about business and government concern over human life are just that: mere chatter. The system that created and allowed the major consequences of this tragedy to thrive cannot simultaneously act in any sincere regard for its victims.
The Disastrous Consequences of Capitalist Urban Planning
It is the working class who lose everything in disaster, but unfortunately not their chains.
-Amadeo Bordiga
Engineers were aware that the city of New Orleans was unable to survive a storm higher than a Category 3, yet developers kept developing, investors kept investing and insurers kept insuring. Unsurprisingly, when the levees were breached 80 percent of the city was submerged underwater. New Orleans is a prime example of capitalist development patterns at their ghastly worst. Much of the city was subject to neglected infrastructure, which made it more susceptible to natural disasters. Furthermore, lax building codes made it easy for developers to develop with no regard for the precarious environment the region was built upon.
A key factor in this debacle is the history of capitalist exploitation of the land. In the 20th century assorted forms of high impact commercial and industrial development descended on southeastern Louisiana like a plague of locusts. Brian Azcona and Jason Neville tell us “economic activities required erosion-causing modifications to the landscape such as canals, levees and drainage. Historically, these wetlands provided invaluable flood protection by acting as a sponge to soak-up the menace of storm surge. In fact, before these new ‘protections’ were built, healthy periodic floods depositing nutrient rich sediments were actually increasing out to coastal areas. Where land once stood is now open water, providing fuel to the flurry of hurricanes…development reduced the absorbent capacity of the region, while simultaneously increasing runoff and toxicity. In other words, economic growth translated into more water, more danger and a greater and increasingly imminent catastrophe.” [2]
The story of development in the Gulf Coast region follows a pattern of out-and-out neglect for the land and those who live on it. The Army Corp of Engineers, a government agency, actively started building the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) in the late 1950s. The MR-GO “is a 70 mile ship channel that connects the Port of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico in a route as straight as a ruler.”[3] First and foremost, the idea was to build a port that would provide revenue for the area. The building of this port, however, shows, with clarity, how the interests of business are placed above any real concern for the massive loss of life that could likely occur in the event of a major calamity. In certain estimations, this canal was responsible for trapping Katrina’s winds. These winds then breached the levee, causing massive damage and creating toxically unsafe conditions. The tireless campaigning, on the part of people and various grassroots organizations, could not stem the tide of business interests. On the part of the government, nothing was done to even mildly quell the tide of public disgust directed towards this monstrous canal. And we are now living with the end result.
The poorest area of the city, the Lower Ninth Ward, was flooded beyond belief due to the breach of the levee. But the impact of this storm also affected well-to-do beach houses inhabited by the wealthy. The whole region was riddled with ruin and devastation. However, the poor and working class victims are the ones whose lives will be the most difficult to put back in order. From the start, those unable to trudge out of the region before the storm hit were largely those who had no means of transportation. Family and friends who had a way out loaded their vehicles and whizzed off to safer ground. The poor, without transportation or the monetary means to buy an Amtrak or Greyhound ticket, were forced to weather the storm. There have been a few photographs released of hundreds of school buses – some less than a mile from the Superdome – submerged underwater. Those school buses could have saved numerous citizens. But for whatever reason it was more “practical” for the city to allow them to sit idle in a parking lot.
Yet let there be no mistake about it. Modern urbanization itself brings with it cities that are built primarily for the production and, most of all, consumption of commodities. The monumental architecture of today’s city demonstrates its inhuman, economically centered and seemingly supernatural force. What’s more, this gigantism, which is an inherent part of the modern city, carries forth a whole language of economics where “cost cutting,” “productive efficiency” and various forms of computer lingo overshadow a richly poetic and coherent human use of language. Overwhelmingly, the cities of the last century have undergone significant alterations. Even prior to the end of the Second World War European and North American cities had a character that was undoubtedly commercial, but still retained vestigial elements of the rural culture from which a large number of the inhabitants of many major cities emerged. These rural elements commingled with a worldly cosmopolitan culture. By some accounts New Orleans had this dimension to it with its Mardi Gras festival – unfortunately in recent years it has tended to focus less and less on the festival aspect and more and more on the commercial and exchange aspect.
The nonorthodox Marxist Karl Polanyi once carefully examined how the market mechanism has profoundly penetrated and transformed society. According to Polanyi, whose major work, The Great Transformation, was published in 1944, ever since the end of the 19th century we live in a world where the market rules supreme. Virtually every aspect of our existence is consumed by the imperatives of buying and selling. It is no earth shattering revelation that production for the sake of profit brings with it land, soil and air that is unfit for habitation by humans or other animals. The glitter, glitz and excess of the city carries along with it slums and shantytowns like sections of New Orleans where those who labor for the idle rich reside. The overall trend is towards the urbanization of poverty where farmers or peasants retreat from their rural dwelling and enter the urban zone. Often times the rural dweller abandons his land because he can no longer afford the burdens of unemployment and increasing property taxes. So it comes as no real surprise then that the distinctions between urban and rural are starting to become increasingly blurred. Cities and suburbs are demolishing the countryside while city dwellers are increasingly isolated from one another in shared feelings of alienation and anomie. Concentration and poverty tend to breed isolation as well as hostility and anger. In a city such as New Orleans it is obvious that crime has a direct correlation with circumstances like poverty and overt racism. Crime is social category but the reality of it exists. And those individuals who engage in it are trying to survive in a world dominated by vast disparities in wealth, notably between the rich and the poor.
For all of its cultural treasures like the French Quarter (which apparently withstood the winds of the storm) and its Mardi Gras celebration, New Orleans (like all modern cities) was built upon the backs of the poor and working class. There is no way to tell what will become of this historical city once the debris and ruin is cleared away, but what we can say with certainty is that Katrina is merely the tip of the iceberg. The world economy before the storm hit was steadily worsening while the general sentiment among the poor and the working class the world over is one of defeat and resignation.
The Historical Meaning of Hurricane Katrina
The modern day obsession with “living in the moment” has dire consequences. George Orwell once pointed out, in his legendary book 1984, what it means when humans are incapable of articulating themselves and their history. The main protagonist, Winston, sits down to write but is incapable of doing so. The words cease to have any meaning while Winston is locked into an ahistorical present. Winston’s world is tightly controlled by a totalitarian system which is perceived as abstract, untouchable and faceless.
We face a troubling social predicament that has striking parallels to Orwell’s dystopia. Isolated behind the wheel of their automobile and imprisoned in front of their television set, women and men of the 21st century suffer from a crisis in understanding and relating to themselves, one another and the world. No longer able to understand his past history, the modern man trudges along – lost in a depressing and mind-numbing world. Katrina is then seen as an “event” on par with any other “event.”
But in this blinding haze of fragmentation there are moments, however brief, when human solidarity asserts itself. In the aftermath of Katrina there has been an enormous show of mutual aid by residents of the storm-strewn southeast. In many instances, concerned inhabitants have scoured residential areas by boat in an effort to help neighbors evacuate their homes. The looting of stores and the redistribution of commodities also shows how once sacred objects can become, to coin a term, desacredized and used for human need, not profit.
When all is said and done, however, the magnitude of this hurricane will be calculated and cataloged by the learned authorities. They will place the results of their findings, like specimens, on the proper shelf and wait for another disaster to hit. Notes will be compared between hurricane Katrina specialists and specialists of the latest natural catastrophe. Yet they will be unable to act in any substantively different manner towards the latest crisis. Like déjà vu, the miscellaneous bureaucracies will pin the blame on one another, public opinion will be at least partially satisfied with the results and developers will start developing once again.
Crucially, this devouring pattern of normalcy must be broken. The human condition has become increasingly perilous. We are living in a time which threatens not only to erode the last threads of human endeavor and history, but we are also threatened with the destruction of the natural world. There is something truly cynical about an age which refuses to see a way out of its stingy grime of disaster and subdued dread. The loss of any real sense that we can fight back comes part and parcel with the notion that “nobody ever fights back (or has fought back historically), so why should I?” Beyond the electronic bits of information we are encouraged to consume lies a world that must be remade. The historical record is bursting with examples of ordinary humans (not stars, celebrities or politicians) transcending the bounds of a market society. Whether it be the Parisian Communards of 1871 mutinying against the army or Argentineans in late 2001 forming neighborhood assemblies as a response to the crash of the Peso, these instances are springboards that provide a living hope for a potential world of colorful promise. Will we live up to such a promise? No one can say with any degree of certainty but the static void that humans have allowed themselves to be drowned in offers nothing but more disasters like Katrina.
-September 9, 2005
ENDNOTES
1. Detroit: I do mind dying, Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin (New York, 1975), quoted in Murdering the Dead: Amadeo Bordiga on Capitalism and Other Disasters (London, 2001).
2. “Unnatural Disaster: The Crisis in Public Planning,” Jason Neville and Brian Azcona, September 2, 2005, neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/4096.php.
3. Ibid.
The author of this article also publishes Communicating Vessels, a periodical started in 2001. Communicating Vessels combines theory and history with surrealism as well as poetry.
Communicating Vessels can be ordered directly for $3 ppd from:
Communicating Vessels / 3527 NE 15th Avenue #127 / Portland, OR 97212 / US